Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil Blount DeMille (12 August 1881-21 January 1959) was an American filmmaker and political activist. He was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and he became a stage actor in 1900, later going on to write stage productions and silent films. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and a financial success, and he went on to make several more Biblical epics during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1956, he remade The Ten Commandments as a technicolor film focused on Moses and the Exodus, and it was his largest success. He died in 1959.

DeMille was a lifelong conservative Republican activist, supporting Herbert Hoover during the 1920s and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948, and serving on the board of the anti-communist National Committee for a Free Europe.